Stephan Talty (born 1960) is an Irish American journalist and author born in New York to parents from

County Clare County Clare ( ga, Contae an Chláir) is a county in Ireland, in the Southern Region and the province of Munster, bordered on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Clare County Council is the local authority. The county had a population of 118,81 ...

. He is famous for creating the character of Abbie Kearney, a fictional female detective who pursues

serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

s in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...

. He also cowrote '' A Captain's Duty'', about the 2009 hijacking of a ship by Somali pirates.

Career

Talty attended Bishop Timon High School in New York and Amherst College in Massachusetts, before finding employment as a journalist with the '' Miami Herald''. During the 1990s, he went freelance in Dublin and New York, and contributed articles for the ''New York Times Magazine'', ''GQ'', ''Playboy'', the ''Irish Times'', and the ''Chicago Review''. In addition to writing detective fiction, Talty has written several nonfiction books on crime and American history. He cowrote the book that was the basis for '' Captain Phillips'', and wrote ''The Black Hand'', a novelization about the killing of Italian American cop

Joe Petrosino Joseph Petrosino (born Giuseppe Petrosino, ; August 30, 1860 – March 12, 1909) was an Italian-born New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who was a pioneer in the fight against organized crime Organized crime (or organised crime) ...

in 1909. In 2013, the movie ''Captain Phillips'' was released in the US, directed by

Paul Greengrass Paul Greengrass (born 13 August 1955) is a British film director, film producer, screenwriter and former journalist. He specialises in dramatisations of historic events and is known for his signature use of hand-held cameras. His early film ' ...

and starring

Tom Hanks Thomas Jeffrey Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Ha ...

and Barkhad Abdi. The screenplay by Billy Ray was based on the 2010 book ''A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea'' by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty as co-writer. In 2017, Paramount Pictures announced that it had acquired the movie rights to Talty's upcoming novel ''The Black Hand''. Leonardo DiCaprio would star as

, and the film was due for release in 2018.

Works

*''Mulatto America: At the Crossroads of Black and White Culture: A Social History'' (2004) *''Empire of Blue Water - Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army'' (2008) *''The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army'' (2009) *'' A Captain's Duty'' (2010), with captain Richard Phillips * ''Escape from the Land of Snows: The Young Dalai Lama's Harrowing Flight to Freedom and the Making of a Spiritual Hero'' (2010) * ''Agent Garbo'' (2012) *''Black Irish: A Novel'' (2013) *''Hangman: A Novel'' (2014) *''Operation Cowboy: The Secret American Mission to Save the World’s Most Beautiful Horses in the Last Days of World War II'' (2014) *''The Secret Agent: In Search of America's Greatest World War II Spy'' (2014) *''War Hero: The Unlikely Story of A Stray Dog, An American Soldier and the Battle of Their Lives'' (2015) * ''The Black Hand'' (2017) ( a novel about the crime organization) *''Speed Girl: Janet Guthrie and the Race That Changed Sports Forever'' (2017) *''Saving Bravo: The Greatest Rescue Mission in Navy SEAL History'' (2018)

Filmography

* '' Captain Phillips'' (2013) * ''The Black Hand'' (2018)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Talty, Stephan Living people American people of Irish descent American crime writers 1960 births